The invention more particularly relates to a method for assigning parts of multimedia files to distributed storage devices to allow efficient multimedia playback of any multimedia file from any device. It assumes that a shared communication channel is available, e.g. devices have WIFI interfaces and are within communication range. The shared communication channel could for instance be a broadcast channel.
With various systems of storage devices that cooperate to allow each device to access multimedia content, reliability is, in the prior art, accomplished by increasing reliability on each device and not on the entire system seen globally. The present invention relies on the presence of a shared communication channel between devices so as to bring additional reliability to the system. Reliability is considered with respect to device failures. Unlike in systems of the prior art, quality of service requirements, minimizing occurrences of degraded playback experience, are taken into account in the present invention.